I am quite angry with you:  you write me letters so entertaining that they make me almost forgive your not drawing:  now, you know, next to being disagreeable, there is nothing so shocking as being too agreeable.  However, as I am a true philosopher, and can resist any thing I like better, I declare, that if you don’t coin the vast ingot of colours and cloth that I have sent you, I will burn your letters unopened.

Thank you for all your concern about my gout, but I shall not mind you; it shall appear in my stomach before I attempt to keep it out of it by a fortification of wine:  I only drank a little two days after being very much fatigued in the House, and the worthy pioneer began to cry succour from my foot the next day.  However, though I am determined to feel young still, I grow to take the hints age gives me; I come hither oftener, I leave the town to the young; and though the busy turn that the world has taken draws me back into it, I excuse it to myself, and call it retiring into politics.  From hence I must retire, or I shall be drowned; my cellars are four feet under water, the Thames gives itself Rhone airs, and the meadows are more flooded than when you first saw this place and thought it so dreary.  We seem to have taken out our earthquake in rain:  since the third week in June, there have not been five days together of dry weather.  They tell us that at Colnbrook and Stains they are forced to live in the first floor.  Mr. Chute is at the Vine, but I don’t expect to hear from him:  no post but a dove can get from thence.  Every post brings new earthquakes; they have felt them in France, Sweden, and Germany:  what a convulsion there has been in nature!  Sir Isaac Newton, somewhere in his works, has this beautiful expression, “The globe will want manum emendatricem.”

I have been here this week with only Mr. Muntz; from whence you may conclude I have been employed—­Memoirs thrive apace.  He seems to wonder (for he has not a little of your indolence, I am not surprised you took to him) that I am continually occupied every minute of the day, reading, writing, forming plans:  in short, you know me.  He is an inoffensive, good creature, but had rather ponder over a foreign gazette than a pallet.

I expect to find George Montagu in town to-morrow:  his brother has at last got a regiment.  Not content with having deserved it, before he got it, by distinguished bravery and indefatigable duty, he persists in meriting it still.  He immediately, unasked, gave the chaplainship (which others always sell advantageously) to his brother’s parson at Greatworth.  I am almost afraid it will make my commendation of this really handsome action look interested, when I add, that he has obliged me in the same way by making Mr. Mann his clothier, before I had time to apply for it.  Adieu!  I find no news in town.

302 Letter 169 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(652) Arlington Street, Jan. 22, 1756.